Sunday, July 29, 2007

V1 Cruise Missle Remains Found in London

In the news today, a WW2-era V1 proto-cruise missile (which for some reason the mainstream media likes to call a bomb, totally missing the unbelievable innovation of these horrific things) was unearthed during excavation for a new building in London.

This of course led me to re-peep the information on V1's, of which there is plenty on the net.

But what I really wanted to find was a sample of what one of these things sounded like. They were derisively nicknamed "doodlebugs" by those that were targeted; apparently the Brits had a habit of giving pejorative nicknames to scary things so as to take the edge of the terror.

The name referenced the strange sound V1s made: they had a primitive jet engine(!) that made a very distinct sound in flight, which was so loud it could be heard up to 10 miles away.

When the internal guidance system (!) sensed that the thing had flown far enough (measured by revolutions in the tiny nose-mounded anemometer thingy) it pitched the missile into a power dive. The force of the dive cut off fuel to the engine, and 15 seconds later the device and its very large payload hit the ground in a shallow dive (rather than dropping straight in like a conventional bomb) spreading death and destruction up to 1,800 feet away from the impact zone.

So people on the ground in England could totally hear these things flying over, and grew to know they had 15 seconds to hide once the weird sounds stopped.